Nurse practitioners (NP) are well-trained health care personnel for primary, acute, and specialty care in the US. However, 32 states have restrictions on their scope of practice and Illinois is one of them. In response to the shortage of health care workers during the coronavirus pandemic, twenty-one states granted NP full practice authority to cope with the increasing demand for health care services. In the Midwest, Kansas, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, and Wisconsin adopted a more expansive scope of service for NP. This report evaluates the effect of this policy change on the rate of COVID-related deaths in the Midwest states, which expanded NP authority and sheds light on healthcare policy in Illinois.